A considerable amount of data are generated and consumed in the course of modern electronic communication. Much of the generated data reside in long-term storage repositories, but in many cases, the stored data may not be accessed frequently. In many cases, the older the data are, the less frequently they are accessed. Similarly, less frequently accessed data may have lower performance requirements than more active data. Thus, data storage systems that are designed or implemented to handle the performance, accessibility and/or durability requirements of newer data may be overbuilt for older, “colder” data. While modern hierarchical hardware storage systems exist to make more efficient use of storage resources, it can be burdensome and/or difficult for such systems to scale with increasingly large numbers of concurrently connecting customers with different performance, accessibility and/or durability demands for stored data.